<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Sublimation by Penknife</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28465518">Sublimation</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/pseuds/Penknife'>Penknife</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age: Inquisition</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>BDSM as a way to cope with addiction issues by replacing drugs with sex, Bondage, Friends With Benefits, Lyrium Addiction, M/M, Verbal Domination</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:27:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,599</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28465518</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/pseuds/Penknife</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen's wrestling with some demons. The Iron Bull helps out.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>The Iron Bull/Cullen Rutherford</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Bulletproof 20/21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Sublimation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyclicalAngst/gifts">CyclicalAngst</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>If you're reading this fandom-blind for Bulletproof Exchange and want to have some idea who these people are, see end notes.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"It's not about sex," Cullen said.</p><p>"I don't think that's true," The Iron Bull said, and watched Cullen's eyes narrow in the firelight just enough that he figured he'd better not leave it there. "I'm not saying it has to be sex. Just that this isn't going to work if you're not honest with me."</p><p>"This probably isn't going to work, then," Cullen said. He was sitting across the table from Bull in a straight-backed chair like he was already tied to it, although there wasn't anything holding him in place besides some kind of ingrained Templar training not to slouch. His hands were the only thing wrong with the picture, clenching restlessly on his knees.</p><p>"You're not that good a liar."</p><p>"You have no idea," Cullen said, with something that might have been very dark humor in his voice.</p><p>"Huh. So you've got hidden depths."</p><p>"Being a Templar in Kirkwall was," Cullen said, and there was a long pause while he tried to frame the rest of that statement. Bull resisted the temptation to fill it. "Not a position in which one could succeed through perfect upright honesty."</p><p>Which was a damned shame, Bull thought, because he suspected that Cullen had been a sweet kid who just wanted to do the right thing, once. "Try me."</p><p>"I am not uninterested in sex, but right now I think its main value would be as a distraction from my more pressing problem."</p><p>"The lyrium."</p><p>"I resolved to give it up when I left the Templar Order," Cullen said. The fine tremor in his hands was visible even when he pressed them to his knees. "I expected—accepted—pain. Not this maddening craving." Cullen's fingers tightened, his jaw clenching, but he was pretty good at not looking like he was desperate for his next fix. "I have always felt that Templars who allowed themselves to become addicted to lyrium lacked self-discipline."</p><p> "Cullen, you're all addicts," Bull said bluntly. The ability of Templars to persuade themselves they weren't was impressive.</p><p>"Dependent on lyrium to function. Yes. Not …" Cullen closed his eyes, and for a moment an expression of hunger passed across his face that was more frankly sexual than anything he'd showed so far. "I find it hard to keep the promises I've made to myself and to the Inquisitor."</p><p>"Getting off addictive drugs is hard, yeah. You thought it would be easy because …?"</p><p>"I thought myself a better man," Cullen said, and now they were getting at something raw.</p><p>"You're a good man," Bull said. "And you've been pretty honest, so let's find you that distraction. Substitute. Whatever it is you're looking for, here."</p><p>"I don't think a substitute is likely to be possible. I'll settle for a distraction." He hesitated, and then added, "It won't be your fault if it doesn't work."</p><p>"I know that," Bull said, but it was kind of nice to hear anyway. Cullen was going to be a big softhearted mush about somebody someday, when the man was in any kind of shape to fall in love. Bull figured that they were doing this as friends, but Cullen still wasn't a bad friend to have.   </p><p>"As long as you do."</p><p>"That said, let's show a little optimism," Bull said. This was not the moment to try to crack open that reserve and make Cullen admit he was afraid he couldn't live without the lyrium. What he needed was to feel more certain that he could, and for that, he needed a taste of some other kind of high. "How do you feel about being tied up?"</p><p>Cullen's expression was a complicated one. "I've never done that, except occupationally."</p><p>"Being a prisoner isn't the same thing."</p><p>"A definite no on being a prisoner. Being tied up—" Cullen's throat worked, as if the effort at honesty required an equal effort to breathe. "If you stay."</p><p>"Not going anywhere." He wasn't in the habit of leaving tied-up people alone anyway, but that wasn't the thing that seemed to need saying.</p><p>"I'll try it."</p><p>"Stand up." Bull moved the chair until its back was against the bed, because he figured Cullen kicking the chair over backwards was the most likely way for this to go wrong, and it wasn't worth having the whole conversation about "if you panic" and "I'm not going to panic" and "just like you weren't going to have problems getting off lyrium?" that he could spin out in his own head. "Take your clothes off, one piece at a time. Fold them up, put them on the table."</p><p>"Is that necessary?" Cullen said, although he shrugged off his fur overcoat and laid it neatly on the table before reaching for the fastening of his uniform jacket. He had at least shed the armor. It was hard to make taking armor off sexy, although Bull was willing to try.</p><p>"It's not just the fix, right? It's the anticipation."</p><p>Cullen breathed a humorless laugh. "Yes."</p><p>"So. Get naked. Slowly. I'll watch." The last words made a pink flush spread at the back of Cullen's collar, but he didn't hesitate to shrug out of the jacket, fold it with military precision, and start stripping off his shirt. He had a pretty back, hard-muscled and relatively unscarred despite a soldier's life. Bull was aware that there were scars that didn't show, and had some guesses about where they might lie. That was the advantage of doing this with a friend, and if he still felt a certain residual guilt about violating the Qun by fucking someone he cared about, he was used to it. The Qun was finished with him, anyway, which meant he was finished with it.</p><p>And none of that crap needed to be in his head while he was helping Cullen out. Cullen had gotten his boots and socks off, and was working on his trousers. He wore linen breeches underneath, and when he dropped those, it revealed a well-muscled ass and hard thighs that were pale rather than tanned gold.</p><p>"Good," Bull said, because his only other thought at the moment was, <em>damn</em>, and he wasn't sure how well that would go over. "Come sit in the chair."</p><p>Cullen sat. There was high color in his cheeks, but he was still only half-hard when Bull looked down to see. Too tense, too self-conscious, and probably in too much pain from the lyrium withdrawal. He'd work on all that stuff.</p><p>"I'm going to tie your wrists to the chair," Bull said. He found buckled leather straps that would work, and lashed Cullen's right wrist down, then his left. Cullen pulled at the straps hard enough to test them, and then relaxed a little, some of the tension going out of his shoulders. That was a good sign. "Now your ankles." He did them more loosely, so the man could still shift his feet, but couldn't kick.</p><p>"Am I to be punished?" Cullen asked, his voice sounding a little ragged already. Bull knelt on the floor in front of Cullen and spread the man's knees with his hands. Cullen resisted, then relaxed. Bull was starting to get a feel for that pattern, the instinctive struggle, then the deeper relief when the struggle didn't result in the touch being withdrawn.</p><p>"Do you want to be punished?"</p><p>The play of expressions across Cullen's face was complicated enough that Bull was pretty sure they weren't going there that night. "I don't know."</p><p>"You like pain?" The slap he delivered on the inside of Cullen's thigh was a love pat, not even enough to make the blood rush to Cullen's skin.</p><p>"No," Cullen said, even as his cock swelled, straining up against his belly. "I have enough of that."</p><p>There was some part of Bull's hindbrain that wanted to prove the man wrong, that said that he could find a way to turn bright incandescent pain into its own pleasure-drug until Cullen begged him for more. Just his nails, first, to leave red lines down the inside of Cullen's thighs …</p><p>He knew what he wanted, knew he wasn't going to do it, and took a steadying breath of his own for a minute. "That's fair," he said, and used his hands to stroke, instead, up and down the lines of Cullen's thighs, soothing at first, then teasing, too light.</p><p>"Harder," Cullen said.</p><p>"You're not giving orders right now," Bull said, and kept up the touch. Cullen arched his hips and strained for more contact, and Bull persistently refused to give it to him. He used his fingertips on the hollow of Cullen's hips, and then up the flat of Cullen's belly. Cullen flinched hard in ticklish discomfort, and Bull kept it up.</p><p>"This isn't what I—I need you to—"</p><p>"You can stop any time," Bull said. "But you aren't giving orders."</p><p>"I don't want to stop, I want—I need—" Cullen was straining at the bonds, even though he didn't, really, need more than this yet, wasn't anywhere near the edge of orgasm. Cullen had no idea how much he could take, Bull thought, and if that thought made his own cock feel heavy and rock-hard, well, he'd never said he wasn't going to enjoy this.</p><p>He worked Cullen over that way for a while, while Cullen complained for a while, and then was stoic and silent for a while, breathing hard, and then eventually started to whimper, a barely audible moan of protest every time Bull dragged his rough fingers across Cullen's nipples or up the inside of Cullen's thighs.</p><p>He was too turned on at this point for it to hurt when Bull started using his nails, dragging them lightly down the pale skin of Cullen's inner thighs, marking him with faint lines of pink. "Take a look," he said, and Cullen made a helpless, pained noise. "I'm not going to cut you. Just giving you what you keep saying you want. More."</p><p>"I need," Cullen managed, and arched his hips, thrusting into empty air. "More."</p><p>Cullen's hands were still shaking where the leather strap restrained them. The best fuck in the world was not going to do a thing about the physical symptoms of lyrium withdrawal, but Cullen's fingers weren't pressed flat to the chair arms in an attempt to steady his hands anymore. Bull doubted that Cullen remembered that he had hands at all right then, with all that blood rushing to his cock.</p><p>He bent his head to use his mouth, licking his way up Cullen's thighs, and Cullen made a gratifyingly loud noise and strained hard against the bonds. He was glad he'd tied the guy's ankles, the way he was trying to wrestle his way up into Bull's touch by main force. He mouthed his way up the other thigh, and then repeated the process, this time biting just hard enough for Cullen to feel his teeth.</p><p>"Please," Cullen said, and he sounded just a little broken in a way that opened up Bull's chest and made him aware that he was getting his own kind of high out of this too. "Please don't stop now. Please."</p><p>"I promise, we're going to finish," Bull said. "You're going to get what you need."</p><p>He could see the moment when Cullen was struggling to believe him, and then the moment when he did. The tension Cullen had been holding onto went out of him all at once, and he sagged in the bonds, his face transported with the urgent anticipation of release. It was the same desperate craving that had showed in a flash when he thought about the lyrium bottle, but now it was all about the idea of getting Bull's mouth on his cock.</p><p>Bull braced his elbows on Cullen's thighs and spread them wide, and then bent his head, leaning forward so that Cullen could feel the hard curve of his horns against his belly as he took the man's cock in his mouth. He had expected Cullen to yell, and he was kind of impressed that the sound that came out of him as Bull mouthed his cock was nothing more than a strangled groan.</p><p>Then Cullen drew a gasping breath, and Bull realized that the man's throat was so tight that he couldn't make any more noise than that if he tried. He rested his arms on Cullen's thighs, trying to gentle him without backing him down from the oversensitive peak of arousal. He wanted him up this high, so that sex was the absolute only fucking thing he could think about, not any of the stuff that hurt him. He just wanted him to keep breathing in the process.</p><p>It was too hard to find the line without raising his head, so he did, replacing it with his hand wrapped hard but unmoving around Cullen's cock before the man could protest. He knelt up enough to kiss the hollow of Cullen's throat, and Cullen shuddered, long and hard, writhing in frustration and over-sensitized need, but he seemed to breathe a little easier once he'd stopped shaking.</p><p>"You're pretty close," Bull said. "I'm going to get you there this time. I want you to count each stroke. I'm thinking we're not going to get to ten."</p><p>He pumped his fist, and Cullen gasped, "One."  Another stroke, and Cullen threw his head back, his throat working, sweat beaded at his collarbone. "Two." Another. "Three …" Bull could see the man's muscles tightening, every part of him straining for it. "Four," Cullen rasped. He strained harder, feet arched, thighs tight, his wrists tugging against the straps, and then cried out as he came.</p><p>For a long, sweet few moments Cullen was entirely relaxed, all the struggle drained out of his face to leave only utter satisfaction. Then he opened his eyes, and his expression sharpened but didn't harden. "Maker. That was—"</p><p>"Looked like it was good."</p><p>"Very." Cullen looked entirely disheveled, his light hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, red marks standing out on his wrists as Bull unfastened the cuffs. Some of the scratch marks were going to stay, too, but that wasn't a bad thing. It wasn't just the fix, it was the anticipation of the next time. "Do you want me to—" Cullen nodded pointedly in the direction of Bull's erection.</p><p>That sounded good, but watching Cullen like this, almost relaxed, was better. "Next time," he said. "Right now, how about you drink something hot, and then get some sleep."</p><p>"That sounds good," Cullen said. "Both of those things." He rolled his shoulders, and then his neck, as if testing what hurt. Some things did, Bull could bet, both from withdrawal and from the strain of pulling against his bonds. Still, he looked better, as if he'd satisfied some essential itch enough that hopefully he would go sleep. "Thank you."</p><p>"I'll happily do you that kind of favor any day," Bull said. "Because, <em>damn</em>." He put all the appreciation he'd managed to hold back before into his voice, and won a surprised but genuine smile from Cullen.</p><p>Bull found himself hoping that next time would be soon, and not just because he figured regular sex might unknot some of the knots in Cullen that they hadn't even touched yet. There was something infinitely satisfying in figuring someone out, and giving them the thing they needed without even entirely knowing it. It was a hell of a rush.</p><p>"You know I'll be back," Cullen said, in a tone of shameful anticipation.</p><p>"My door's always open," Bull said, and tried not to sound like he was just as eager for next time.   </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><a href="https://images.saymedia-content.com/.image/c_limit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_700/MTc0MzY1Mjc5NzM4OTMwODIy/how-to-romance-iron-bull-in-dragon-age-inquisition.webp">The Iron Bull</a>, Qunari (big horned minotaur dude), canonical BDSM top, mercenary captain and ex-spy, likes to hit things very hard with a sword, is (much) smarter than he looks, used to follow a religion called the Qun that forbids personal sexual relationships, now has a complicated relationship with the Qun and its rules after getting exiled from his people for complicated reasons. </p><p><a href="https://images.saymedia-content.com/.image/c_limit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_850/MTc0MzY1MjgxMzQ5NTQzMjcy/how-to-romance-cullen-in-dragon-age-inquisition.webp">Cullen Rutherford</a>, human military commander of the Inquisition (they're fighting an evil villain with a demon army, it's very stressful), joined the Templar Order when he was young and started taking lyrium (lets Templars dispel magic so that they can control mages, is also incredibly bad for them), got tortured by some demons summoned by evil mages, was an anti-mage fanatic for a while, had a change of heart, quit the Templar Order, struggles with lyrium addiction.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>